


The right words (to break me up)

by Olorisstra



Category: The Losers (2010)
Genre: Because someone needs to, Explicit feelings, F/M, Jensen telling Clay off about Aisha, Jensen/Cougar is the endgame, Kinda dark in places, M/M, emocezi was involved in this (whenever isn't she?), for otherpervert, no explicit sex, thanks annelislashfan for reminding me I had fics on lj
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-15
Updated: 2013-09-15
Packaged: 2017-12-26 16:19:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/968024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Olorisstra/pseuds/Olorisstra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They say, words cuts deeper than swords. In Jake's case, they wound deeper than bullets too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The right words (to break me up)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [splinterintocolour](https://archiveofourown.org/users/splinterintocolour/gifts).



> A/N: This is birthday fic for . I know that the exchange was with (I asked her if she was okay with me writing this) but I saw your prompt and I couldn't help myself, I hope you don't mind getting birthday fic from me too based around your prompt! HAPPY BIRTHDAY FROM ME TOO!
> 
> A/N 2: I have to warn everyone that this is not betaed and you all know about my issues with verbal tenses so I apologize from the beginning about it. I wanted to send it to my beta but then the first day of NaNoWriMo ate my life.
> 
> A/N 3: Those? *points to above* From 2010. Nothing really changed about this story since then. I did forget I had a few fics to move over here in the The Losers fandom so, thanks to annelislashfan for reminding me of them. Now you can download it :3

Had he heard about it by anyone else he wouldn’t had believe it. He would have refused to grant the speculation even a second of his thinking time before shooting it down.

Cougar is his friend, respects him.

Jensen has always thought that and he has always also thought that it wasn’t only him thinking of the other man as someone worthy of respect and friendship.

Big. Fucking. Mistake.

* * *

It happens in June.

They are back at Fort Bragg and Cougar has taken up hanging out with other snipers just like Jensen is getting back in contact with his friends from his time with the NSA and the comm experts of Fort Bragg.

It’s just a case that Jensen happens to pass right out of the door of the restroom while Cougar’s there playing cards with his sniper buddies.

It isn’t like he was trying to listen to them or anything.

He was actually on his way out and towards a drinking night with Mike and Joe and the restroom is on his way out. The door is unlocked and has drifted a little open, just enough that the voices comes out.

* * *

“… it’s a really lousy fuck but you know, when there’s nothing else around you do with what you have.” Cougar is saying and Jensen snickers as silently as he can because somewhere out there there’s a poor girl who’s failed to live up to Cougar standards.

The other men in the room laughs and then one pipes up.

“You should have know from the shirts. I mean, they’re a rare kind of fugly.” He says and there’s a grunt of agreement for Cougar.

Jensen slow down, because now is curious and he can’t remember any girl Cougar dated on base that was into fugly shirts. 

The man has some sort of crusade going on against people who doesn’t dress the way he likes. One or two of Jensen most fabulous t-shirts has disappeared because of that crusade, really.

“You just have to close you eyes and think that it’s all about getting laid. It’s a general rule, for me, even when I deal with everything else. It works wonders, especially when you have to keep from telling what you really think in other situations. You think it’s all about getting laid and if you’re the silent type you’re perfectly set.” Cougar adds to his grunt, because the man is actually capable to talk nevermind the fact that he’s silent as fuck when they’re on mission.

“Yeah, but getting back on topic… that hideous glasses should be another warning sign. Never bang someone who’s wearing those kind of glasses, there should be a rule against it in the official handbook.” Another voice gets into the conversation and Jensen is still wracking his brain on who the girl could be. 

Someone who Cougar had to fuck because he didn’t had many other choices, with “ _ugly_ ” shirts (the sniper hates his shirts, it’s clear that he’s got no idea of what a humour-oriented fashion sense is) and glasses. His brain is still coming up with nothing.

“Yeah, they only add to the nerdiness of the overall look which is just nerdy enough. I mean, someone should inform that poor soul that nerds can be hot too. It’s not like hackers aren’t allowed to be hot.” The voice who piped up first goes back in and that’s when everything clicks right into place.

Cougar answers something and the others talks too but Jensen is too busy feeling like he’s been sucker punched to actually hear more details. That’s where his memory gets fuzzy, afterwards.

* * *

He finds himself in the car with Mike and Joe without knowing how he’s got there and if he had done anything to betray his presence to Cougar and his buddies but he thinks not because everything seems to be normal and there aren’t MPs frog marching him anywhere or missed calls on his cellphone.

So Jensen proceeds to gets drunker that he’s ever been, because he doesn’t stop to count how many bottles of beer he drinks and how many shots he’s guzzling down, and end up waking up in an unknown bed sandwiched between two chicks he can’t even remember.

* * *

The bed is sticky and he’s in sore need of a shower so he gets up and into the bathroom, going right into the shower stall to take one.

He and Cougar hadn’t fucked all that much. They fucked in the downtime during the missions on when they were stuck outside the country and didn’t had Clay permission to go out and wander around or drink their heads off or both at the same time.

It was also a stress-reliever thing and Jensen hadn’t got the impression that Cougar thought he was a lousy fuck, since he always came back and since they had some really good fucks, at least in Jensen mind.

They didn’t talked about it, didn’t say anything about it and it didn’t weighted down their friendship. They just did it and were okay like that or so Jensen had thought.

Apparently he was wrong and just thinking about it made it hurt so much that he was starting to think that maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to chase the hangover off by liquoring himself up again.

That’s when one of the girls comes up in the bathroom and smiles at him. She’s got a nice rack and long hairs dyed white. Her eyes have black smudges around and her lips are painted a really strong shade of red, considering how pale she is.

“I’m Cora” She smiles and then she’s in the shower with him and, well, Jensen can chase off Cougar this way too. It’s not like they’re exclusives or shit and at least Cora there seems to think that he’s a great fuck.

* * *

Cora is twenty-one and a student at the Fayetteville Technical Community College. She and her roomate Angela, the girl still snoring in the bed, are in the Certified Nursing Assistant II course.

Jensen discovers it over coffee, after she tells him that they found him getting drunk on a bar stool all alone. Apparently two friends of his, Mike and Joe he supposes, pointed him out to two of them.

They are in their apartment five minutes from the college, on foot, and Cora would be _really_ interested in giving Jensen a ride back to Fort Bragg.

She’s making doe eyes at him, Jensen knows when a girl is hitting on him thank you very much, and why the hell shouldn’t he take advantage of her offer?

He tells her yes, kisses her and goes back to find his clothes.

* * *

She likes Nickelback, Jensen finds out when they are in her old Volvo, and they laugh their asses off singing _Animals_ when it comes up on her burned cd.

He’s relaxed and she makes him feel great. 

It would be a perfect morning if Cougar words weren’t stuck in a corner of his head, coming back to him whenever his eyes catches on his shirt color. It’s a bright fuchsia t-shirt with CAT LADY PRIDE written over a black silhouette of a crazy cat lady surrounded by cats.

The tone, that’s burned itself in Jensen memory without his permission, takes an almost sneering quality that it didn’t had in the first place. It gets drowned out only by the sound of Cora’s voice so he talks less that he usually would and listens to her.

She’s against war but supports the troops on principle. Her brother was in the army but he was injured in Afghanistan and now he’s back home with a limp and a job as a recruiting officer here in Fayetteville. She listens to Theory of a Deadman but less then to Nickelback and she thinks both of them are inferior to Gun’s ‘n’ Roses but she’s not on board with them returning without Slash, as it’s been rumored to happen. Her favorite food is japanese and has eaten enough chinese in her life that by now she’s disgusted by it and that’s when he tells her he knows the perfect little japanese restaurant near the base and he would like to take her there.

Her smile is wide and she bits lightly in her bottom lip before saying yes. She’s not wearing make-up and her hair are up in a ponytail, her shirt is pink and she’s wearing camo pants. 

Jensen thinks she’s cute and she smells nice when he leans forward to kiss her on the lips, at a stop light. 

He’s aware she’s nothing more than a rebound, that he’s using her to drown out the ache that Cougar words left in him but he’s never claimed to be a good guy or a nice boy so he tells his conscience to shut the fuck up.

He kisses her again when she stops out of the base and exchanges phone numbers with her just before getting out of the car.

He can feel her watching his back and somehow that helps him to steel himself while he’s going in.

* * *

Back on the base everything is normal.

They still aren’t scheduled to go on a mission any time soon and they’re all left to their own means. 

Jensen helps Pooch with unclogging an engine and keeps himself busy, not avoiding Cougar but not going out of his way to greet the sniper either.

It’s not like something has changed except for Jensen perspective on what’s between him and the sniper. 

They’re still friends, as much as it hurts Jensen to think of Cougar as just a friend instead of his _best_ friend in the whole world, and they are still the same persons they were the day before.

So he eats with all the team and jokes and goes out with them that night, drinking lightly and playing darts with Roque. He sits near Cougar and forces himself to act as if everything is fine, blaming his gigantic hangover for his being a little off his game.

He doesn’t tell them about Cora, doesn’t brag about her. He could, he even would hadn’t he been serious in wanting to take her out.

He’s actually more serious now than he was in the car when he asked her to and he’s that serious because he can’t stand the sight of Cougar smiling at him and acting as if they are best friends when just the day before he was calling Jensen a lousy fuck to his sniper buddies.

It’s jarring how little Jensen knows Cougar, how mistaken he had been in his assessment of the mexican. It may have been because he’s the silent type, the sneering voice in his head mocks him.

Jensen gets up and drags Pooch to the pool table because he can’t stand here a second more without giving in and punching his mexican _friend_.

Once he’s wiped the floor with Pooch ass he gets on the bar payphone and fish out of his wallet Cora’s number. 

He calls her, asks her if she wants him to come around the next day and she laughs and tells him that yes, she would _love_ that, her voice enphasizing the l-word.

Jensen feels immediately better and when he goes back to the table he doesn’t feel like punching anyone, as if her voice had managed to summon up the feeling of being appreciated and liked that he felt in her car that morning.

He hums up _One Week_ by Barenaked Ladies and lets himself enjoy the night, even when Cougar slow down in their walk back to Fort Bragg so that he may be on par with Jensen.

The hacker chatters about anything and nothing of importance and in his mind he tunes up the memory of Cora’s voice telling him that she would _love_ to go out with him to drown out the voice of Cougar talking about thinking to get laid to get it up.

He manages to make it back into his bunk with no one the wiser to his real mood and lets himself fall asleep before the others come up with ways to lenghten that night.

The last thing he tells himself is that he can do it, he can manage this without fucking everyone else life up. He even sounds like he believes himself.

Then his world fades to black.

* * *

Cougar doesn’t even begin to suspect that he’s done something wrong until six months after the overheard conversation.

* * *

By then Jensen has taken out Cora fourteen times and they actually _are_ a couple, which is a really nice excuse to make the sex between Cougar and him to stop.

Cougar doesn’t seem all that fond of the fact but it’s probably because he can’t get laid as often as he could before, the sneering voice in Jensen head rationalize. He has taken to call that voice _Sneery_ because it’s simple and right on the point.

Jensen has met Cora’s brother around the third time he took her out. Mark took him aside and gave Jensen the traditional “ _fuck with my sister and I fuck with your kneecaps_ ” talk that big brothers all around the world seems so keen to do.

He’s presented her to his unit on date number eleven and he was about to tell Jane, and little Beth, about her when they get sent to Bolivia.

Things get really fucked up after that.

* * *

The world thinks they’re dead baby-killers and Clay has completely lost it, trying to hunt down Max by shelling bucks out to the only place with a 56 k connection in the city they had taken base in.

Roque’s patience is wearing thin, Pooch is practically worshipping any shot or info Jensen can found on Jolene and Cougar is all simmering rage.

Jensen has thought he was managing well with the unknowing help of Cora but now his safeline has been cut off. He tries to cope with everything, but mainly being back to living with Cougar, by taking a night job as a bartender to avoid being in the same room as Cougar and the chicks the mexican brings back to the hotel.

One night the owner of the bar invites in the back for a little _chat_.

That night Jensen comes back to the hotel a hundred dollars richer, which is like to say a thousand considering the shitty city they are holed in.

He’s also bruised as hell but it’s easy to sneak in his bed without arousing Cougar, who’s sleeping with one of the factory girls in his own bed.

The next morning he’s aching and the throbbing from his ribs keeps his mind off the fact that he’s working next to someone who still pretends to be his _best_ friend when he’s nothing like that.

The shirt covers the bruises and the ones on his face and the scraped knuckles he explains by talking about having to throw a group of fighting drunks out of the bar. It’s a nice, simple, re-usable excuse and Jensen really likes it.

He goes back to the fighting ring three nights later, when the owner of the bar gestures to him again.

It’s not like having Cora around, for starters it hurts a hell lot more, but it’s still something.

He’ll take anything, by now, as long as it keeps _Sneery_ in the background of his mind instead of the forefront.

* * *

Aisha comes around and they’re still following Clay, because he’s their leader not matter what he say about them not being in the military anymore.

That phrase, though, seems to change something in Cougar because the sniper gets more friendly after that. 

He sends short texts in spanish to Jensen when they’re flying up in their temporary caskets, he shoots the paramedic Jensen was chatting up, there’s the whole _awesome_ scene at Goliath with the security guards and the smile he gives Jensen at the Port of Los Angeles when the hacker gets out of the yellow limo-humvee is wide and happy-looking.

Jensen doesn’t know what to do with that, once the adrenaline of the fight wears out and he finds himself sprawled on one of the seats of the car waiting for Cougar to finish stitching Pooch legs.

The stitches in Jensen’s arm have ripped somewhere along the line and he’s going to have Cougar redo them. 

That’s until he manages to annoy Aisha into redoing them for him in exchange for being silent for a few minutes. 

Cougar seems to be pissed off by that, clearly not trusting Aisha, and maybe a little hurt, but that one Jensen couldn’t figure out for the life of him so he just chalks it up to his tired mind and proceeds to get asleep while Aisha is sewing him up.

He’s fucking exhausted, it’s not that difficult.

* * *

Cougar wakes him up gently when they arrive to the safe-house Aisha has set up for them. 

Jensen is always a little fuzzy for the first seconds after he wakes up and the sniper steers him in the house and into a room with two beds in it.

“Can’t I have a single?” Jensen croaks up and Cougar head whips toward the hacker so fast Jensen worries for a second he might have pulled something.

The sniper is looking at him like Jensen has told him he was working with Wade or something like that but Jensen is too tired to fucking care.

“What?” He snaps instead. 

He’s fucking exhausted, _Sneery_ has been hellish recently and he’s hurt and has nothing in sight to help him cope. No Cora, no fights, no double work shifts, no hunt for Max at least for a while.

He’s tired enough to give up the pretense and just let the ugliness in him bubble up and out.

“You think we’re going back to being fuck buddies if we room together? I know you’re not going to have it easy with the girls right now, considering the mess we’re in, but I’ve got no intention of going back to being your lousy fuck for the times you ain’t got nothing better to bang.” Jensen seethes and then proceeds to flops down on his bed.

 _Good job, loser._ a familiar voice sneers in his mind and Jensen sends _Sneery_ to go fuck himself too, before leaving the world behind for a dreamless sleep.

* * *

The next time Jensen wakes up is to the smell of coffee and a fuzzy world, rapidly explained once he realize his glasses aren’t on his face anymore.

He blindly searches for them until they’re handed to him and when he puts them on the fuzzy shape that handed them to him is revealed to be Cougar, looking at him with something that could be concern.

The sniper hands him a mug of coffee and patiently waits for Jensen to drink it, which the hacker does warily, never taking his eyes off the sniper.

Cougar waits for him to use the bathroom and come back to get dressed, since Jensen has somehow ended up with only his boxers on. He doesn’t move from his spot on the other bed in the room and his gaze never lifts from Jensen, who feels a little like a target. It’s not really a pleasant feeling.

“We have to talk.” A second of pause “Now.” The sniper is deadly serious and Jensen looks at him at loss of words. He hasn’t even gotten around to trying to rationalize a way to explain his outburst the night before and Cougar wants to talk right now?

The tactical part of Jensen’s brain recognizes this ambush for what it is but it’s no use to him, not when he’s been caught wrong-footed by the counter-attack put up by the sniper.

 _Talking_ , really?

 _Now_ , seriously?

“Fuck my life.” Jensen groans and lets himself flop back on the bed, throwing the pillow over his face in a pitiful attempt to banish reality from his sight. It’s also a briefly lived attempt, because Cougar just picks the pillow up and away from Jensen face and then gets back to his own bed.

-

“You have been acting strange.” Cougar states and, _shit_ , Jensen would do anything to get out of this conversation but at the same time he knows there’s no way he could escape this. The longer he drag it on, the worse it would get because Cougar is observant and patient and when he gets a target in his sights he’s not the kind of man to let anything stand in his way.

So Jensen counts the spots on the ceiling and say nothing, waiting for the other man to continue. He may stand here for the talking but he sure as hell is going to do the least of it.

Talking about _feelings_ and shit like that has never been their thing.

To be honest, talking about _feelings_ has never been _his_ thing, except when he’s doing so mockingly or for a joke. Talking about it isn’t going to change what he feels, just brings it closer to the surface and makes it harder to cope with it and still stay perfectly functional.

Yeah, this time around Jensen is going to be the silent one who just rarely gives input.

“I thought it was because of the _ninos_ , because of Jane and Beth and because of Cora.” Cougar manages to say the name of Jensen girlfriend, ex-girlfriend by now, for the first time in the history of ever. 

He’s never really liked her all that much, tough Jensen was probably the only one to pick up on that at the time. He never called her by name, he would twist the angle of his mouth slightly while she talked and the PDA’s between her and Jensen left him hiding a disgruntled air under his hat. 

Jensen noticed it all and decided it was just a bonus to the benefits of being with Cora, pissing Cougar off. He also made a mission of talking about her anytime Cougar started edging towards him in that way that meant that he was about to try to get into the hacker personal space. 

Worked like a charm to keep the distance between them and it was also a sure fire way to keep the other man away for hours.

It was petty but Jensen’s never claimed to be above pettiness. Actually he had pretty much revelled in petty revenges, thought they were good for boosting the unit murderous spirit other than laughing his ass off. He used to have a shirt about it, even, before fucking Bolivia.

Cougar puts a stop to Jensen’s train of thought when he talks again. It’s just ingrained in Jensen: _when Cougar talks you listen_. He hasn’t managed to get rid of that particular impulse yet, doesn’t think he’ll ever will and, yeah, Cougar’s talking.

“I think I’m wrong, now, and I think that it’s something related to me and you.” The sniper say and he looks right into Jensen’s eyes, in that way he has that makes the blond squirm and wish he could have any kind of distraction to divert Cougs attention.

“As I thought.” Cougar nods and heaves a sigh. “In the beginning I thought it was because I didn’t liked her since you started to cool off towards me when you two began dating but after what you told me yesterday I doubt it.” He’s still looking at Jensen and if the hacker didn’t knew better he would almost believe that Cougar is hurt by what’s going on, by the words Jensen partially spouted back at him before collapsing on the bed.

There’s sorrow in his eyes and they look a little as if Jensen is breaking the man heart which is all kind of ridicolous considering how low his opinion of Jensen is in reality.

“I never, _never_ thought of you in those terms, Jake, and I don’t know what gave you the idea but I can assure you it never even grazed my mind.” He sounds so fucking sincere that Jensen could almost believe him, had he not heard Cougs spouting them out.

Even after hearing him telling his buddies about it, he almost caves in and believes him. It’s the use of his name, that soft _Jake_ , that almost does him in. He never, ever even just entertained the idea that Cougar could be so good of a liar.

It makes him want to scream and rage and weep and it must be in his gaze because Cougar inhales, sharply, and almost recoils phisically, even if it cuts that down before he’s halfway through it.

“What did you hear, Jake? Who told you those things?” He murmurs and his voice breaks on the name and his eyes get as hard as steel on the who, as if he’s planning a revenge.

As if he’s been slighted by someone, which is really fucking rich coming from him.

Just like that, Jake Jensen is done for. He’s sick and aching and worn-out and he’s been holding up for months and he’s fucking tired of all this shit so he just looks at his supposed best friend square in the eyes and tells him the truth.

“You.” He almost hisses, and he didn’t thought he was capable of sounding so venomous. “You told your buddies at Fort Bragg, told them all about the hacker with the fugly shirts and the hideous glasses and I heard and I was just passing but I heard enough and I never thought you of all people would do such a thing. You were supposed to be my best friend asshole, not the one putting the knife in my back and tolerating me because you wanted to get laid when no else but _this_ lousy fuck was around!” He seethes.

Cougar, god… he looks as if Jensen has just slapped him. He knows it’s because he didn’t expected to be caught, _Sneery_ is right on that like a shark on blood, and he can’t stand the way he seems like he’s almost pained, like something is gone horribly wrong and he’s just now realizing it.

He wants to hit him but he _can’t_ at the same time, so Jensen stands up and leaves the room, ignoring the voice behind his back, calling him. He dodges Cougar attempt to grab him and when the sniper tries again he slams his shoulder into the man chest, cutting off his breath and sending him skidding back.

He ignores the shocked look Pooch throws them from the sofa the man he’s sprawled on and he leaves the safe house, feeling like he’s going to tear the place up if he doesn’t channel his rage into fucking someone else up so bad the other person ends in a hospital.

He would have done it to Cougar, except he couldn’t. Not with Cougar looking the way he was, because Jake Jensen apparently is still a sucker for Carlos Alvarez, no matter how bad he feels.

It’s night and it’s not that difficult to find out a fighting ring. Jake is still black ops, he still knows how to find those kind of places just by looking while walking around. 

It’s stupid and risky as hell but he couldn’t care less.

Fuck the world, Jensen is done.

* * *

Clay tracks him down three fights after Jensen convinced the ring leader to let him in the cage. He’s good at convincing people and he’s got the muscles to back up his talk, so it didn’t take long to get inside of it.

It’s LA so the first two men in the cage with him had been latinos, which served Jensen just fucking perfectly. He tore the first to pieces, not literally mind you, and layed it down heavily on the second.

Third man to step into the cage is asian, mixed martial arts fighter. When Jensen catches sight of Clay it’s because he’s pounding the man head against the fenced “wall” of the cage.

Clay is looking more understanding that pissed off but Jensen doesn’t care either way. He just drops the asian, japanese from the curses he was spouting a little earlier, and turns around, raising his arms.

“Who’s next?” He calls, in a way that reminds him of too many B-movies to list all of them. The crowd cheers him and the ring leader looks like Jensen is made of dollars. There are girls looking saucily at him and a man with a svastika on his shoulder steps in the ring.

He’s as tall as Jensen and looks like a nasty piece of work, which is all good and right in Jensen world right now. It’s not like there are any rules here.

He let loose and goes on to deliver a really angry ass-kicking on the motherfucker.

* * *

A shitload of money and kicked asses later, Jensen and Clay shares a beer in a bar near the safe-house. It’s a shitty hole but no one is saying something about Jensen being bruised as hell and that’s all their asking for, at the moment.

Clay hasn’t told him a word but he looks like he’s going to talk any moment now. Jensen sips his budweiser and waits for it, because he’s too tired and drained to talk just to fill in the silence.

The anger is gone, has left him hollow and deflated and aching worse than he was before. His stitches has ripped, again, and he’s going to need someone to redo them and to do some others to his brow and his lip and maybe his cheek too. 

One of the man he beat down tonight wore a fucking ring. Jensen has made him eat it, before kicking him out of the cage. 

Fucker.

“You need to sit down with Cougar and listen to him, Jensen.” Clay tells him.

Jensen briefly thinks about bashing his bottle of beer into the man skull. It’s a fleeting thought, though, erased before it has gained a real form and as such he doesn’t act on it. 

He still goes for the throat, using the truth as his weapon.

“You need to get your shit straight.” He answers and he takes a sip from the bottle just to give the phrase the time to sinks in. 

“I don’t fucking care if we’re still military or not. You made it all about Max when it should have been about taking your unit, taking us home. If we’re not your unit anymore then we still are your friends you asshole, Pooch still has a kid coming. You stopped giving a fuck about us and started giving a fuck only to your fucking, shitty quest and we stuck around because we are your unit _and_ your friends wether you like it or not.” He assaults Clay verbally, doesn’t give him the time to get a word in edgewise.

“That woman? She’s just using you and then she’s going to kill you and that can be good and all for you but it’s not for me. Maybe you think you can turn her to our side with the power of your healing _fucking_ cock or some bullshit like that you’re spinning for yourself but I don’t believe it and I’m not about to give up on you but I may put a slug in her brain wether you like it or not.” Jensen drinks again, ignoring the pain from his busted lip, and doesn’t let Clay stunned expression stop him.

“She shot me, she almost fucked us over and she and your fucking quest costed us Roque. He wanted to take us home, he gave us outs. He still was acting as our SIC and our friend while you let your cock and your obsession dictate your actions. Our friend betrayed us and got killed because you slowed down your hard on for killing Max by showing it in her pussy.” Jensen spit out and it was ugly and nasty and pouring salt in a fresh and still completely open wound but it was the truth and it had to be said.

He was fucking tired of pretending everything was fine and dandy and yes, Aisha was a badass chick but she still was a motherfucking viper ready to bite them all in the ass. Someone had to remind Clay of this, since he didn't seemed to get it on his own.

“Pooch can’t stand her, she grates on his nerves, and she _shot_ me and we lost Roque. She’s been a _cunt_ since day one and if you want to bang a crazy chick I can find you a million of them but I’m not going to watch while this one dry fucks all of us over just because you like the way her pussy smells. You’re my friend and I would die for you but only if you start thinking again like you were before those children died and that bitch waltzed in our lives, fucking and lying her way in and antagonizing Roque since the beginning. She’s hot, you know I think that, but that’s not enough to put up with her bullshit, not anymore.” He drained the bottle and waited for Clay to digest it all.

How the man reacted to this was going to determine wether or not Jensen was going to stick around, no matter how things ended up with Cougar.

Clay stood there long enough that Jensen had the time to order a bottle of tequila and see it arrive at the table. He also downed a couple of shots before the older man shook himself from the state he was in and realized that there was booze on the table.

Jensen poured a shot into Clay glass and he downed it like the pro at drinking he was.

“Fuck.” Clay muttered, passing a hand over his face, and the pain for losing Roque was there as where the slow realization of how much things were fucked up.

“Yeah, you should do less of that.” Jensen joked darkly and downed a third shot, immediately lining a fourth up for himself and a second for Clay.

They went down easy like water, which was par of the course for Clay and slightly alarming for Jensen, but they did another round anyway.

“Everything’s fucked up.” Clay admitted in a low voice and then he exhaled slowly. Jensen just nodded, shrugging, because things always were with them. This time it was just worse than usual.

“We have to get Pooch to Jolene, once he’s healed up or before if she’s going into labour sooner than that.” He added after a moment and Jensen felt an almost dizzying rush of relief at the gruff tone. It was one he hadn’t heard in too long.

“The moment she tries anything, I’m blowing her head off.” Jensen warned, going for the sixth shot. Not really the best idea, after a couple of beers, but it was like all the rules were off the table for now and he couldn’t care less about it.

He wondered if that was how mercenaries felt, not being bound by regulations or anything like that and just being free to do what the hell they wanted when they wanted as long as they fulfilled their mission. It would have been a heady feeling, had Jensen being any less exhausted than he was.

He sat down there, with his _friend_ Clay who hadn’t been around since that helicopter crashed down, getting as drunk as they could together because they both needed it and neither Roque nor Cougar were around to drink with them.

In a sense, Jensen realized, they were each mourning their own best friend.

He chased the feeling away with more tequila.

* * *

When Jensen woke up he found himself back in his bed and immediately reached for the trashcan just near it, emptying his stomach contents into it.

A cool hand held his forehead while another pressed soothingly in his back, helping him ride it out. He vaguely recognized the touch as belonging to Cougar but he couldn’t bring himself to care about it at the present time so he just flopped back on the bed when he was done.

His whole body was screaming murder at him and he swallowed the pills he got handed without even asking what they were, just hoping their effect would kick in soon.

The room was dark, the blinds closed so tightly that if out was sunny it didn’t showed, and Cougar was sitting in the bed just nex to him, the hand on his forehead still there.

“I’m sorry _cariño_ , _lo siento mas_. I swear to _Dìos_ , I wasn’t talking about you, Jake. I was talking about that analist on the fifth floor with the hawaiian shirts and star-shaped glittery glasses, the one I took in my bed when you were in the infirmary with the broken ankle and the busted arm.” His voice was low and broken and he sounded as if he was on the verge of breaking down.

“She was a lousy fuck and I just did her because I couldn’t do anything with you, Jake. I have never thought anything like the things I said about her to my friends. Not about you, never about you. You’re my best friend in the whole world, Jake, you are my _cariño_.” The sniper murmured in his ear, stroking his hair almost lovingly.

Jensen wanted to believe him, he desperately wanted to get his best friend, and the trust between them, back. He was _so_ tired of feeling hurt and tired and drained, he didn’t had any fight left in him or any to strenght to oppose himself to the hope that what Cougar was telling him was real.

“Swear to me.” He murmured, the weariness winning this battle and leaving him down for the count, open and vulnerable. Cougar continued to stroke his hair, gently, and lowered his head so that his forehead was touching the side of Jensen’s own.

“ _Te lo juro_ , Jake.” He murmured and, just like that, Jensen couldn’t hold it together anymore and he broke down, not in tears but in shivers and dry sobs. 

Cougar held him tight, muttering sweet reassurances in spanish that Jensen understood and soaked up just like a sponge.


End file.
